Aleksandr Voinov's Blog: Letters from the Front, page 27

Coming up for air (redux)

I'm not sure where the last three months went (or rather, I'm sure, but I barely felt the time pass!), but here I am. Riptide Publishing, which has been eating most of my time and energy is open for business.

I had seriously underestimated the amount of time, energy and emotion this would take. Or what can go wrong, and what would be no problem at all. I've learned a huge amount about things I only had a faint idea about. There were some hairy moments, hilarious moments, silly and angry moments, but, bottom line, I'm damn glad we did it, and the rest of the team is awesome to work with.

I have a release to celebrate, too. "Dark Soul", the first part of the series of the same name, has been released by Riptide. I'm following up every 3-4 weeks with another part, and most likely that should carry us through to February or even March.

Beyond Dark Soul, I haven't written a thing in the last months - too busy working on the publisher, but it's now beginning to calm down (thank Gods!), and I expect to soon get back into it. My characters feel quite neglected, and the sense of failure I get when I'm not productive in
terms of writing is getting almost unbearable. Regardless how much else I have going on, if I'm not writing, I feel like a loser. That's how I'm wired.

There's a huge amount of interviews with me all across the blogosphere, too.

Here's a big one about me.

And about Riptide.

And soon there's a whole range of Dark Soul interviews and fun stuff at Amara's Place.

(I'm now stealing a moment to update my website...)

I blogged over at Slash & Burn

Apologies - I need to get better about blogging, but wow, we're busy.

But I DID blog over at Slash and Blurn - about the stories coming up soon. You can still win that Kindle or $115 book certificate, btw. Just pre-order "Counterpunch" (at 20% off, too) at Storm Moon Press's website.

Hot boxers (NOT the underwear) and messed-up men, what's not to love?

I'm just coming to the end of my mandatory two-week break. (As a financial services worker, I'm legally forced to talk ten consecutive working days off - even though I'm not a trader courting burnout, but that's ok). Today, and the weekend, and Monday starts on the early shift - getting up at 5:30 will be a bit of a shock after the habit I've formed recently. Oh well, I'll live.

Autumn is clearly here. I remember, last year at this time I was very nearly burned out of my job (despite all the awesome travelling) and getting ready to go to Chicago. After a weird heat wave last week temperatures have dropped. It's *cold* and crisp now, as nature catches up with the calender. The mind turns towards taking stock - and what is left that needs doing. For me, that's taxes, mostly. A couple ARCs that we need to send out, a humongous interview I need to edit down as much as possible (a 6k interview?? HOLY HELL).

But life's good. So much better than last year. Can't wait for winter.

Saturday Snark from "Counterpunch"

Marie Sexton has gathered some delicious Saturday Snark here. So I'm adding a short dialogue from "Counterpunch" (which you can pre-order here):

--------------------

"Brook!"

Brooklyn grabbed the bag and turned. It was the only thing he could do to not attack Les. "What?"

"You listening to me?"

"No." Brooklyn bared his teeth. "Okay, now I am."

"Take it slow. Too much strain isn't good, either."

Brooklyn released the bag and gave it a double-fisted shove. "Right. What now? Any more appointments?" Fuck, wouldn't that be a Nathaniel word? "Any more perverts to fuck me?"

"Actually," Les gave him a stare, "I'm tempted to say I'll tell you when you've calmed down."

Maybe he could get a punch in before Curtis tasered him? If it was a good punch—smashing nose and/or teeth—it might be worth it. No, not Les. But God, it was hard.

"Your attitude stinks, Brook."

"So I've been told. You think I'm temperamentally unsuited to being a slave?"

Les shrugged. "Management just called me. No more appointments."

"Oh really? And why not?"

"They want you to focus on beating Esch."

"I'm not beating him with my dick."

Les laughed, clearly despite himself. "That's a thought. Damn, you should be a radio host. Chris Moyles could learn a thing or two from you."

Brooklyn managed a smile. "Yeah. Cocksucking."

Get Counterpunch early and win a HUGE Amazon cert. (or Kindle)

Now that I've whined enough, here's something cool: You can pre-order "Counterpunch" from Storm Moon Press. It's currently 20% off at their website (that's right, just $4.79), and everybody who pre-orders gets entered into a draw to win 1) signed poster, 2) signed paperback, or 3) $115 Amazon gift certificate or a Kindle.

Also, you get to read "Counterpunch" two days before everybody else does.

Here's the link again: http://stormmoonpress.com/books/Count...

Official launch will be on 4. November.

"Counterpunch" edits - done

Ten days later - and I'm done with "Counterpunch", which received a pretty good scrubbing in the meantime. I've cut the lazy writing, sharpened my structure, fixed some factual mistakes (these days, all writers have to do their own fact-checking anyway), and cut all the flourishes and self-indulgence that added nothing to the book.

Which now means I'm trashing my print-outs, my notes and re-shelf my books on boxing. Clean up my work area and thus clear my mind of the book and characters. And then I'll sit down in a corner, cradle my hurting brain and whimper softly. (Editing a book means you have to carry the whole thing in your head and remember everything, because nobody else will ever point out the small issues and mistakes, and nobody takes ownership of this, so, essentially, this final edit is very much the writer's obligation, and wow, but it's hard work.)

Editing, I've heard it said, is the punishment for writing.

But holding the book like that, and having done my research and my fact check, I have ideas for a sequel, possibly. There's some intriguing possibilities with the characters, and another character who can mess it all up.

However, it's all up in the sky right now. I'll need to clear my head now, do nothing writing-related for a couple days (I'm thinking I'll play "Gears of War" pts. 1 and 2 to celebrate the launch of "Gears of War 3" NEXT FRIDAY!!!), then do the sanity and typo check on two novels of two friends - both urgent, both great novels.

After that, I'll write my half of "Lion of Kent 2" (which involves a metric fuckton of research) for Carina Press (hopefully), and hope to close 2011 with that.

In terms of novels, I'll dedicate 2012 entirely to WWII - both novels need to get going again or I'll lose the characters, but the research is intimidating to say the least. Twelve months for two historical novels and around 50 books of research sound about right.

After all the books written this year, I'm looking forward to taking things down a notch. Writing novels in 6-8 weeks is completely insane. I simply can't do it. I dig in too deep, deal with pretty complex things and I can't do that in 6-8 weeks. I'll need some time to find my equilibrium, so I'd say 2012 will be a "slow" year, and I'll definitely try to do some travelling, too after staying at home in 2011.

So, yep. Mission Accomplished. Now relaxing.

Counterpunch edits

I got the edits for "Counterpunch" yesterday, which all seem relatively minor--a couple typos, passages where the rhythm is off, house style things and that's pretty much it (I guess I'm just a clean writer overall, and "Counterpunch" has come out pretty clean overall). So that could be easy, right? Err, no. I've recently been on a bit of a "trip to the past" with regards to my style, which tends to mean paring the fluff down even more, using a tighter POV and overall better structure.

Which means, knives are out and I'm giving this book the full treatment once I have a moment. (Work at work is crazy. We're again under strength, thanks to holidays and people leaving. Which is somewhat unfortunate in terms of timing.) The biggest decision I have to make is how to deal with any potential connected work.

Right now, there are a couple "missing scenes" from "Counterpunch" that would make a good addition to the book. Originally, I was hoping to write a related project (possibly a novella), this month, but I don't think I can fit it in. I'm also thinking that that novella might actually belong to a potential sequel or might stand completely on its own. The main issue is, the novella puts everything that happened in "Counterpunch" into a completely different light, and it seems wrong to simply deliver that like an afterthought. So, potentially, that idea might be large, it might start where "Counterpunch" ends, and I'm running out of time on the "Lion" sequel and a number other projects.

A couple days ago, a good friend told me she has an aggressive cancer, which in many ways brings home mortality (apart from all the other emotions that I can't speak about--least of all in public. That's stuff that I need to work through on my own, really). From my family history, I have a good chance to get cancer, too, so at least I have a fair idea how I'm going to end.

As a writer, it made me think of all the books I really want to write. It's that old mind-game: If you only had a year to live, what would you write?

In my case, that's "finishing Dark Soul" (a project that's ~20 years old), "Lion 2", and the two WWII novels. So that's basically what I'm going to do, before I think about any short stories, novellas or sequels to anything else. The WWII novels especially have been heavy on my brain, so I'll focus on those for the rest of the year and likely all of 2012.

2011 has been an insanely productive period, but part of me thinks "stop messing around" - it's like I'm running to all these other projects largely because I'm scared as hell to mess up the historicals. I'm scared witless of getting any of that stuff wrong. It's time to turn around and face that particular tiger.

I have that one short story to write and "Counterpunch" to edit, and then I'll tackle those three books. It might even mean that that's all that's coming out in 2012 or even in 2013, but I'm OK with that. If I still have time to play, I'm sure I'll find some projects to fill up the rest of the schedule.

More scarce

Several of my people have asked whether I'm OK - so I'm just quickly writing that, yup, I am.

I'm just busy, doing dozen of hours of developmental edits for Riptide and spending the rest of the time not socializing - I've even left my RL writing group, hard as it was, but I simply wasn't contributing the level of critique that would have been helpful - and the remaining time goes toward preparing the Riptide launch and getting some writing in.

I've found the time to re-read the Two Birds book and the good news is that the writing's pretty good. It'll need some editing, but we have a pretty solid piece so far. Certainly not the worst thing I've ever written, which is something. The *bad news* is that I've forgotten the rest of the plot. I barely know what happens *now*, but after that I'm drawing blanks - and I had a full plot, I'm pretty sure of that. So, yeah, apparently two months or so is enough to forget a plot. Those were two busy months, but, still.

So, as the saying goes, if you don't hear anything from me, I'm writing (or plotting world domination via Riptide, or both). I've also started watching "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman, which, when I tried it many moons ago, didn't do much for me. Now that I know London, however, that's very different. I'm enjoying the insider jokes. Two episodes down, four more to go over the weekend.

Starting on Monday, I'm expecting the edits back for "Counterpunch", and that means more work and a whole LOT more work to turn this around for release. It's OK, it's a good book and I don't expect it to give me any trouble. And while I hope that the editor did more to it than fix a couple wonky commas, I am hoping there won't be huge rewrites.

Chances are, I'll be a bit scarce on the ground this month, as I try to put at least a historical novel and "Counterpunch" to bed. But autumn is the time to slow down, take stock and make the house ready for winter.

Guest blog here

I wrote a guest blog post over at Michael's place.

Holding out for an anti-hero.

I also did some work for Riptide - reading and thinking, mostly, which is largely invisible work. It's all still Going According to the Prophecy. :) I've seen the newest incarnation of a painted cover that's going to take everybody's socks clean off, and there's a long questionnaire I have to fill out. Several interview requests. The biggest challenge is to be fun and interesting - I rarely perceive myself as that funny or interesting, really, but after about 36 years, I've got used to myself, I guess. Few surprises there.

On the front of my own writing, there's some hardcore work to be done on "Dark Soul vol. 2" before I can even think about sending that one in. Also, my brain is very much "between books", so I'm not even that strongly urged to write. Lots of stuff I should be doing, and I'll do all that. Possibly I'll just sit down for an hour a day without distractions and just pile words. Something's bound to come out of it. Now, it's all about overcoming that feeling of "meh".

Cover reveal and details

I was way too busy to catch up with my own life. "Dark Edge of Honor" has been released as an ebook and reviewed and I'm staying out of that discussion. Many things I want to say, and I'll blog about them, at some point, but I'm just way, way too busy to be very erudite or sort through my thoughts. There are things I'd like to explain about the book and the characters, but at the end of the day, the book has to make its way without any explanations or help from the authors.

Less amusing is getting hate mail about how I'm deceiving my readers and how I'm not actually writing romance, which is bullshit, and I have the literature degree to prove my point.

Also, I'm very busy with the Riptide launch, which means editing and planning and budgeting, but it's all Going According to the Prophecy, as the running joke goes. Despite some amusing rumours out there, we're doing just fine and we're well on track to do exactly what was planned.

But more important is The Next Book. There's always The Next Book, of course, and in this case, it's "Dark Soul, vol 1", a collection of two short stories (combined wordcount: 20k) dealing with the same characters and happening right after each other.

The cover was done by the hyper & multi-talented Jordan Taylor:



I've just gone through the first set of edits, which are now back with the editor. "Dark Soul" is going to be part of Riptide's launch line-up - basically, I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

It still was vetted and edited like any other release - Riptide is not a self-publisher. Far from it - the edits I've had there were some of the most details and honest (read: pretty harsh, but real, tangible and constructive), and I believe, on a technical level, my prose has never been as clean as in "Dark Soul".

I'm working on the second collection ("Dark Soul, vol. 2"), and a third, maybe a fourth and fifth, but that's probably it. However, the characters have haunted me for twenty years, so who knows what they are going to do next.

Launch day: "Dark Edge of Honor"

It's finally, FINALLY out. "Dark Edge of Honor", co-written by Rhianon Etzweiler and yours truly, is finally available here.
(It's also available elsewhere, but this is where we get paid substantially more than, say, from Amazon.)




Blurb:

Sergei Stolkov is a faithful officer, though his deepest desires go against the Doctrine. A captain with the invading Coalition forces, he believes that self-sacrifice is the most heroic act and his own needs are only valid if they serve the state.

Mike, an operative planted within Cirokko's rebels, has been ordered to seduce Sergei and pry from him the Coalition's military secrets. His mission is a success, but as he captures Sergei's heart, Mike is tempted by his own charade and falls in love.

When the hostile natives of the planet Cirokko make their move, all seems lost. Can Mike and Sergei survive when the Coalition's internal affairs division takes an interest in what happened in the dusty mountains of Zasidka Pass...?


Amara of course has the skinny. She also has a giveaway here.

And an excerpt about Mike.

And a deleted sex scene. (Yes, we cut some sex... but we're keeping the goodness around for moments like this.)

So this is where you can join the fun. There will also be interviews and more deleted scenes.